Angsty Mind Splurges
by dragonett3
Summary: Oneshots for OCs from RPs.
1. Living in Relation

**I realised I didn't have an AN here... which is pretty weird; you can tell I'm out of practise with this. So this is my character, Darcy, complaining about her life. Because she's a fool :) I thought I'd try writing a oneshot because lots of people (you know who you are, you damned rediculously skilled people) on our RP forum write the most A-MA-ZING oneshots... And it really makes me cry because they're so amazing... (and yes, I realise this is really choppy and broken up by the parenthesis, but this is because of the character; it's not actually my normal writing style. She's incapable of not inserting snarky comments all over the place XD)**

Hello. (If you know me, you'll be surprised already by this. Darcy? A remotely polite greeting? I am _capable_ of being polite, believe it or not. Most people just don't deserve it.)

I have to admit, I'm not entirely sure why I'm writing this. Perhaps I feel as if I need to justify myself. Perhaps I should. It's slightly alarming for me that I'm only a few sentences in and it already feels as though I'm writing a suicide note; which, good god do I hope I'm not. At least, I don't plan to. Commit suicide, I mean; I think that I love myself far too much for that.

I reckon if this was a voice recording, I'd sigh right about now and say something bitter about how committing suicide would be exactly the sort of thing that I'd do to get out of this. This problem that I have, that I can't skirt around anymore. Because that's it, isn't it? The reason I'm writing this. I'm writing it about my problem, which I hope will become entirely apparent later on through this uphill slog that is writing (forgive me, I've never been much one for writing, so I doubt this will be interesting for you, reader who is probably nosing somewhere you shouldn't be, as I doubt I will be waving this around in front of everybody's face. It's currently more of a way for me to quietly try and work something out; I can't talk to anyone else about it.).

One of my problems (Lord, this is starting to feel like counselling already) is that I exist purely in relation to someone else. Which is all wonderful, I hear you cry, but it's not someone I'm married to or in a lasting relationship with or even ever want to be (love is something I'll come onto later, I'm going to write that as a reminder so I don't forget. Nothing if not practical). On my own, I'm just 'that little tiny blonde detective woman with the bad attitude'. Not even blonde anymore; I keep on forgetting. I'm only ever Darcy James when I'm in comparison to Arthur Thompson. Darcy who knows Arthur. Darcy who used to be with Arty. Darcy who has a connection to the Prof. It's a goddamn sad thing in your life when you're twenty eight years old and you know that if you died (here comes the suicide note tone again) maybe two or three people would come to your funeral because all of the other people you know (about six or seven at _least_) only give a shit about you because you know Arthur Thompson. Everyone wants a piece of him nowadays. I'd just like to go back to my job.

And I don't even really know him anymore anyway, before a few weeks ago, I hadn't even seen or heard of him for close on six years. But it seems like he's made even fewer connections than I have, because now everyone wants to destroy him, (you think I'm exaggerating? I laugh in your face.) it's me they come to; me that's chasing around after him again, finding out new and horrible things about him every time I talk to someone. It still hurts to hear this. I don't know why, it just does. Feels like he's let me down. Maybe I'm his mother or something. Maybe I let _him_ down, and that's why he's turned out the way he is. I don't think I've had a single conversation with anybody in the last couple of weeks (since Japan) that hasn't been about Arthur Thompson.

Well. Arthur Thompson or the Prof. But, please, don't make me try and wrap my head around that because I can't. Believe me, I've tried; I can't separate them. The Prof laughed at me because I confused him with Arty for a moment and it hurt pretty bad. I want to say Arty's good and the Prof's evil, but it just keeps twisting like some enormous snake that the second you grab its tail it turns 'round and bites your hand.

Perhaps my problem is that I'm too uninteresting within myself; my life is like a little, blotchy canvas filled with white-grey; looks extraordinarily dull on its own, but if you just plop a streak of red across it, that grey really sets off the colour. Makes it looks much brighter (my mum would've adored that artistic analogy there). But I think the immediate impression of me (after the fact that I am hugely challenged in a vertical fashion) is one of a particularly monochromatic life. Monochromatic looks, blonde (no, black!) hair, pale skin, black eyes, white shirt, grey skirt, black shoes (flat, mind you. I might be short but I'm sure as hell not going to pretend to be tall). My flat, back in London, which I adore, is all black and white too. Neat. Orderly. It's hard to make black and white look clean, but when you do, it looks _sterile_. On the patio I've got plants, but they're all monochromatic too. Green though, instead of greyscale. They've got plenty of leaves, but I just can't manage to coax any flowers from them, and no-one's interested in plants with no flowers.

I feel strangely guilty about writing about my gardening habits, because you don't really care about _me_, if you're reading this, it's for entertainment factor, like one of those _really_ intellectual magazines that women my age should read: _'Stupid woman is forced to choose between her Ex and the man in love with her'-_

And there it is.

That's the really big problem.

Oh _GOD_ no. Please don't think that I have to choose between which to love! Because I don't _love_ either of them (Orpheus, if you're reading this, I will be utterly furious with you. Put it down. Now.) Of course I don't love Arthur, the idea's ludicrous. Orpheus, I met literally about two days ago; maybe in time...

It's like that song says: 'All you need is love'. I'd like to think that I'm someone's who's proved that wrong, but I think that I proved it to be most irrevocably right, that you _do_ need love. Else you turn out a sad, bitter, melodramatic sod like me. And let's face it, who wants that?

In between my witterings, I never quite laid out the problem in excruciating detail, did I? But maybe I've underestimated your subtlety, (Lord knows that's got me in enough trouble before) maybe you've worked it out. One of them's going to die. Orpheus or Arty. Either the man without whom I don't exist or the man with whom I have that one, glittering opportunity to get it right for the first time in my godforsaken life (God does that make me sound like a whore, but it's true). Choosing between the man who made me what I am today and the man who might make me something new. Making the decision between my past and my present, maybe my future (and I know I've described it like in my head before, but it really just sums it up for me).

Biggest choice of my life so far, I imagine. And I've got no idea. I can't choose. I can't tell Orpheus because I know that knowing that I'm even considering choosing Arty would shatter his poor, sweet, naive little heart. I can't tell Arthur because I know that if he asked me to choose him, to save him, I would. And that would be that. I can't just decide not to choose, to do nothing, because that would count as choosing Arty, and Orpheus would die. But realistically, my chances of catching Arthur, knocking him unconscious (not that I wouldn't like to anyway, just because he's a pain in the rear) tying him up (and now this starts to sound more and more like some hideous fetish) and leaving that goddamn book of his with him, are extraordinarily slim. I'm hardly physically capable of it. So it seems like Orpheus will be the unlucky one.

But that's not fair! It's not! Because sometime I hate Arthur. I really do (please, if you understand the Prof/Arty thing, you know I'm probably-but-maybe-not talking about the Prof here). He's a smug bastard and he's manipulated so many people into pretty poor situation. He's a murderer. He runs a branch of the Mafia for god's sake! All he needs is a spinning chair and a cat (although as far as I remember, he's allergic) before anyone would automatically assume he was Dr Evil. But he's made me laugh until I cried. And I did, at one point (a bloody long time ago, mind you!) love him. Quite a lot, really. And Orpheus, I don't know what to think about him. He says he's been in love with me since we were at school together, but, as much as it pains me to admit it, I don't even remember him at school. And who falls in love with someone they never even talked to and holds that love in them for about a _decade? _That nasty, cynical voice which is really just the whole of me whispers the plain old word 'infatuation' and spits that it's something quite different to real love. It can't be true, can it?

I'm Darcy James, and I'm a small, grey moon; a satellite orbiting a red giant and reflecting its light. Another star's gravitational field has crossed into my orbit and it trying to pull me away. For the first time, the harsh, cruel lunar landscape has the choice.

And I've got no idea.

**So... Yeah. Tell me what you think? I'm not really sure about it :/**


	2. Stories for Children

**Not sure really how to explain this, but I had a great deal of odd headcanons for Darcy.**

**I have to admit, it's not much of a story- but**** I swear, sometimes I feel like I need to explain how the hell she came about. So here's a... a life story.**

* * *

As a child, Darcy craved boundaries and rules; because her rather liberal mother didn't set them for her, she found her early years somewhat confusing. Her mother was called Tanya and was an amateur artist and owned a café in the rather green part of the suburbs where they lived. Her father was called Mark, and she adored him because of his steady, down-to-earth, I'm-here-for-you nature, but he had a job in London that meant that Darcy only saw him at the weekends; her mum was her primary care-giver. Unsure as to what to do with herself with two rather absent parents, Darcy began setting her own rules to follow, which she did so rigidly, without question and with great relief, imagining what it would be like to have strict guardians. The only time that she ever lapsed in her loyalty to her rules was in her secret love of the great outdoors; she would, when her mother went to work in her café, leaving her with their family dog (who was, admittedly, extraordinarily protective and large) sneak out to spend hours playing outside with him and her mother's horses. She dared not do it very often, because, despite the fact that no-one noticed or questioned her behaviour, she imagined that it would be discouraged, which she found fairly stressful.

Everyone told her she looked just like Tanya, and she (of course, at that age) dressed in clothes that her mum bought, only adding to the impression. Despite not being a not very diligent mother, Tanya did _love_ her daughter and never really left her lacking for anything; until there was a time between when she was between seven and eight, when her mother started disappearing for usually about a week at a time, with very little explanation. Those weeks were became Darcy's favourites because they meant that she got to stay in London with her dad. They were lonely weeks in the daytime, because he, of course, had to spend much of his time at work, and she could hardly go out and play in the streets. But he spent all of his evenings -even when he'd had a long, full day at work- showing her the city. She saw all the crush of the tourist sites, all the quiet solemnity of the churches and cathedrals; he read to her in fading light of the great big green parks and lifted her up to let her press the buttons on the traffic lights that were especially for horse riders, because they were high up and had little green riders on horses to tell you when to cross. She loved the thrumming energy and excitement of life there, and decided that, as soon as she was all grown up, she would want to live in a flat in London, just like her dad.

When Darcy was eight or nine, Tanya changed, suddenly, becoming a lot more relaxed and calm. Happier, actually, if strangely more forgetful; and she suddenly started feeling as if she needed to save the world. She started campaigning for the planet and the James' all had to become vegetarians, because Tanya said she felt, rather irrationally, if unquestionably, that they shouldn't take any lives. They sold the car, and she taught Darcy to ride horses, even buying her a little piebald pony (who she called Charlie and who became a source of much joy for her; she spent every spare moment riding him and trying to work out what on earth she could do to stay _on_ the animal). It was a nice time in Darcy's life, coloured with a calmness and equilibrium which proceeded comfortably and happily until her teen years, which are stressful enough for any parent. About midway through secondary school, Darcy started an extremely annoying habit of testing her parents by doing as outrageous things as she dared (which meant not particularly outrageous, to be honest; her own rules were rather too ingrained in her mind) to try and provoke a response, a curfew, anything. She became quite independent, because she learnt that if she didn't do something, it just wouldn't get done. However, instead of becoming more mature with this independence, she became cynical and sarcastic, childish and petty; and her rules for herself had become more and more like a hatred for chaos. Everything had to have its own place and it had to stay in it.

She was pretty much a spitting image of Tanya, but at school she did miserably in subjective subjects like English and Art and finds herself doing very well in the Sciences and Maths because she understood the clear laws that governed their worlds; the arts made little sense to her because they relied on genuine, unguarded emotion. She hated that they had grey areas; it made so much more sense to see the world in black and white, right and wrong. This failure to understand the subjects that her mother best thrived in was a source of much disappointment to Tanya, triggering a slightly defensive resentfulness from her daughter, and this unease between them left little room for conversation or understanding. Feeling a little lonely, Darcy was spending more and more time at the stables with her pony, who became her confidante, although it did little to assuage her loneliness, considering that he rarely spoke back (this was a good time for Darcy and Charlie; all this extra time training made him a great little show-pony, and they started entering competitions, in which they often placed). She also fell in with a group of girls that helped her hone her new found skill in destroying people verbally; her somewhat scornful cynicism combined with quick thinking had given her a painfully sharp tongue which she had few inhibitions about using to its full effect, much to her cronies' amusement. She was forever waiting for the growth-spurt that was affecting all of her classmates. It never came.

When she reached sixteen, the cracking foundation of their family began to really shake. Her dad was demoted in his job, meaning that he had to work even longer hours for less money, which in turn lead to Tanya having to sell her precious horses. Darcy's Charlie also had to go. This was, imaginably, a rather tense time in the James household; Tanya was furious and more standoffish than ever, Darcy was distraught and accusatory, Mark was exhausted and disheartened and surrounded by females who were constantly at each other's throats. Darcy finally snapped when, soon after the loss of her pony, one of her mum's friends called her 'Tanya' rather loudly across the street, confusing her for her mother. Livid, she cut her hair brutally short, bleached it white-blonde and resolved to never let it go curly again, throwing away all her casual, colourful clothes to buy only more formal black and white attire.

Her cynical outlook became outright resentful and cruel and she lost her friends when she stopped caring at all about whether she was hurting people's feelings when she spoke. Her alienation from people and discovery that she really preferred being on her own resulted in a developing naivety and awkwardness. Her hatred of disorder and chaos morphed into a hatred for the people that cause it; people that transgressed boundaries and people who questioned the rules. People who broke the law. A mixture of this and wanting to spite her mother drove her to seek out Steve Ally –a man who had long held Tanya's disfavour for some reason or another and who happened to be relatively high up in the police force- to see what she had to do to help enforce order that she so craved. Turned out that it was quite a lot.

Darcy moved away from home to London, aged 18, to pursue her career in policing, much to her mother's fury and her father's quiet pride. Darcy loved it, showing a great deal of promise and her pent up energy and anger was slowly siphoned off; putting it all to good use and giving it direction made her calmer. Everything seemed to be going utterly perfectly for some time, though she still had more than a little trouble with people. She couldn't seemed to get them to like her; though they listened when she spoke because she tended to speak sense, her relationships never moved from professional even to friendly, let alone romantic. Until she met a man called Arthur Thompson, who was also working with the police. Both being young and promising, they were placed into a special operations unit with some of the best and brightest. He was very, very different to her, but he made her laugh and he made her smile, and, for the first time, she found herself falling in love.

Darcy ended up toning down her nastiness and becoming almost bearable to be around, assumedly a direct result of being... happy. There was this sudden, really odd feeling that she couldn't quite explain; one of hope, that maybe, after everything that she'd done, maybe she'd got something right and everything was going to be… okay. This all went on rather happily for a few years. But there was a misunderstanding when she was about 22 (a result of her underestimating his subtlety and him underestimating her utter obtuseness) and the consequence of this was Arty running off without explanation, heartbroken, and her being left behind, equally heartbroken and betrayed. Her descent into becoming complete bitch was made concrete (although I think we can say now that he didn't do too well from it either). And then, within the month, her father committed suicide. At his funeral, bewildered and disorientated, was about when she realised that love wasn't really going to be something that she was going to get; she might as well just get on with it. With this realisation quietly secure, she tried to distract herself from her loneliness and depression by throwing herself into her work, resulting in an unusually fast rising through the ranks. It stopped mattering that she couldn't really relate to her colleagues. She reached the rank of Detective Sergeant at 28, finding herself working once more under Steve Ally.

For Darcy, the story starts with Steve sending her to Japan to help with a 'little' problem that has sprung up. She receives an invitation to a masquerade ball in an extremely unusual location. And this, my friends, is where the trouble really starts for her.


	3. Cold Hands and Fox's Gloves

**And here's something else that's extraordinarily morbid. I thought it might be interesting to try writing something from the perspective of someone who had been... compelled by the Death Note. Introducing Mark James; victim of Nina's Gokudera ;)**

* * *

Mr James' stride lengthened as the train gathered itself into slow movement behind him. Gaining speed, it pushed the warm, stagnant air of deep summer around it and into his throat, where the breath coiled, tired and woozy from the heat. It filled the blessed shade of his mouth until it was almost difficult to breathe.

He was out of the station before the tannoy had finished the train's roll call. It had been a long week in the city and the weekend was calling him home; in a breeze as soft as an exhalation, the wind stirred his short, mouse-brown hair like an affectionate parent. Its breath nodded the heads of the foxgloves that bloomed along the pathway, rustling where the overhanging trees made walking this route like plunging from the bright day into a night-like shade. Mark's eyes, blue-grey and strained from peering past his growing need for reading glasses, struggled to adjust for a few moments, pupils dilating rapidly. There was a barely-noticeable tremor where he carried his briefcase, beginning to feel uncomfortably heavy in his hand that was so much softer than his wife's; dry from anti-bacterial and soap-fuelled city life, but not rough and firm from reins and trowels and fresh air.

The weekend had been a long time coming; it was, he had to admit, a great relief to be home, where the pathways were soft dirt under feet used to hitting pavement. He wanted to see Tanya, though she wouldn't likely be in yet; working at her café still. They always ate their 'Sunday dinner' on Friday, as a sort of homecoming celebration; talking late into the night about their respective works, the stories of people they'd met, how the horses were coming along, stupid things the dog had done. She worked until later than him, anyway, and he particularly enjoyed the few hours alone in the kitchen. Those hours and the way that she always pretended to be surprised and delighted that he'd made her dinner, despite the fact that he did it every Friday (and for the rest of the weekend, if he could get away with it; Mark liked cooking).

He couldn't help but feel a little guilty that he spent the week away from home. Tanya didn't say anything, but he knew that she was lonely with only the dog for company, especially in the years since Darcy had left home. But he couldn't possibly ask her to leave her café (_A Bird in Hand_, it was called) and the home that she so adored, and she would never ask him to give up his own work, either; she knew how he loved the city and the people that were fast-paced and heady with life. It seemed that the pair would work on independently and co-dependently until they wore themselves out. Mark looked ahead to retirement as one long weekend of Friday dinners and surprised delight.

A soft touch on his right hand brought his attention spiralling back down to earth; he found himself brushing the purple and white bells of the foxglove absentmindedly. It had grown even taller since he had last walked this path. If he brought some home, would Tanya be able to get it to grow in the garden?

It was odd.

He'd… he'd never noticed how much he… liked it.

Foxglove.

-x-

By the time that Mark arrived home, his arms were full of plants.

Lots of them he could name; oleander, rhododendron, laburnum, azalea. And the foxglove. Some of them he could not; he remembered Tanya's hands brushing them as they walked together, and her voice giving them names in Latin and attributes and locations in which they prospered and times of the year they had to be pruned. They were mostly bright and colourful, because they were the ones that Mark thought were the prettiest, and he knew that those were the ones she liked best too. There was something else about them all too, something compelling.

He could've sworn he barely remembered picking them at all.

There was a faint recollection of setting down his briefcase to free his hands; he noted that he should probably go back and get it. He shouldn't have put it down in the first place. There were sensitive files in there; his clients wouldn't be happy if he… betrayal of trust…

He had to slide through the cluttered cottage sideways. As ever, entering the house was like walking into a small, stuffy forest clearing at twilight; a forest of bookshelves and easels haunted by the loose ghosts of half-sketched horses and oil-black wolves with dark eyes, oddly out of place in the jumble-sale woodland of his home. The slender skeletons of papier-mache birches barred one wall, weaving uncomfortably in his periphery. Grimacing as a paintbrush leapt out of the half-darkness to jab him in the temple, Mark proceeded to nearly trip over a large, heavy mass of black wolfhound that raised its head and smiled, with a few half-hearted thumps of its tail. Grey-muzzled Shuck was getting on now; it was his full right to expect his master to sink to his knees to greet _him_ and ruffle his thick black fur, he didn't stress his aching joints by getting up. But when he didn't hear the man's usual murmured laughter, he was surprised and disappointed. His glowing amber eyes followed Mark as he stumbled on into the kitchen. The slim line of light from the room disappeared as the man closed the door.

-x-

Mark was sitting on the kitchen floor, surrounded by a Van Gogh of yellows and green and blue. What on… what on earth… The flowers, of course, can't crush the flowers, Tanya'll be ever so… Tanya! What time was it? Later than it should be, he was sure; he felt numb and heavy, as though he'd been sitting for too long.

He had to get dinner on the go; that had to be hunger clawing his belly like he'd swallowed a wild animal, a fox maybe, cunning, digging and scratching just in the right places to try and break through, claws uncovered and knife-sharp. But he had eaten on the way home, hadn't he? He had definitely eaten something. And that had to be dehydration that had his head pounding -slowly so slowly- as if a thorny tree was winding its way up into his head and weaving tendrils throughout his brain. It was a rose tree, clearly, because its flowers were blooming in his vision, blue halos around the bright lights of the kitchen and its leaves were yellow-green. Covering his eyes. The tiles were pulsing yellow and green. Odd. They were usually white.

He knew then that something was wrong; perhaps he should call for an ambulance? But no, somewhere a quiet voice, as sweet as apples but also as sour, was telling him that this was what he wanted. This was what he'd been waiting for for almost a month now.

Maybe he'd make himself some tea.

-x-

He was slumped over the work surface. He half-slid to the floor, letting out a low whimper at the pressure in his head and the sound of scratching and whining from the kitchen door and the blood pumping too slowly in his ears. His chin was wet. He wiped it with a sweat-soaked shirtsleeve over a limp arm. The lights were painful. There was his empty mug, still lightly held in fingers that were beginning to twitch. He had to admit, he usually used a teabag when making tea, but there was something calming about letting the leaves steep and then straining them.

Admittedly, he'd added the flowers too, not just the leaves, watching the purple stars of rhododendron and azalea wither slowly and the bells of foxglove shrivel to nothing in the heat. The taste was something he hadn't experienced before.

Different to just chewing the leaves, as he had on the way home. Not so bitter.

But Lord, how his stomach was turning. He emptied it over the floor. Tanya would be so upset that he'd ruined the flowers.

-x-

Next time he was lucid, he retched again, muscles seizing up and wringing themselves into knots of ivy and nightshade. But his stomach was a hollow cavern that echoed with the apple-voice, it was laughing now; there was no more poison to purge it of.

-x-

Next time, a particularly violent convulsion had him cracking his head against the cupboards so hard that he was out again moments later.

-x-

Next time, he wasn't sure if the screaming he could hear was his own.

-x-

Next time.

Next time.


	4. To Straighten a Broken Spine

**Ahhaaahaaa, and here's a very nice and cheerful one. Hopefully this'll be the last of this one-shot phase I'm going through, at least for a while. I think there were just a few things I wanted to get off of my chest ;)**

* * *

Mrs James' ears rang with the silence of the hospital room. It was a heavy sort of absence of sound, she reflected idly, fanning herself with the papers that were held lightly in small, damp hands that trembled only very slightly. Her next thought was about the heat, and it was spoken aloud in the same vague way that all of her thoughts had been. She was absentminded in the most literal sense of the word; not currently inhabiting her mind, she found that speaking her small, meaningless observations meant that she didn't have to actually think. They kept her busy enough to push away that which she couldn't ignore. And speaking her thoughts meant that the room wasn't so oppressively quiet; each word was a small column keeping the pressure off of her shoulders for a moment before its inevitable disintegration.

Tanya was making her best effort not to think, not to read the papers in her hands, to keep her head as quiet and empty as the room around her; but it was the very silence that she was trying to emulate that acted as a constant reminder. The heartbeat that had been the fading buffer between herself and oblivion no longer drummed its slowing tattoo, the lungs that had gasped at her thinning barrier of hope rasped no more; like a fire that had consumed everything around it before turning in upon itself and irrevocably falling dark. Oh _god_- Mark was dead. Mark was _dead_. She'd never… Mark had _killed himself_. He'd… he'd seen _death_ as preferable to-

The door opening broke her fall; catching her thoughts before they could smash themselves upon the ground. Taking a moment to smooth her face, slow her breath and clear her throat, she didn't turn to face the entrée, expecting another doctor to hand her more sheets of paper to sign, or amend the 'Medical Cause of Death' certificate that she was holding. Or another counsellor to give her more advice on 'managing grief'. In this brief time, this brief moment that she'd managed to extricate herself from her own disorientated mind and look upon her horror objectively, she'd already figured out all she needed to know about grief. Grief wasn't 'managed', it was rejected, then succumbed to. And then it was endured. She knew she would be rejecting for a while.

"Mum?" It was spoken so flatly and rigidly that only a tiny raise in tone at the end of the word was indicative of its use as a question. "Where's Dad?" Tanya's face froze for a few moments, before she slowly turned to look up at her daughter from her seated position. At first glance, she looked much the same as she had for the past six years, with the same formalwear, stiff neck, and shiny straight hair that separated her from the girl of her childhood. Upon closer inspection, not only was her skin darker, tanned from weeks in the Mediterranean, but her clothes and hair were dishevelled from plane travel and, most strangely, she had bruises of sleeplessness under her eyes and she was markedly thinner, as if some great stress had kept her from sleeping soundly.

"Where _is_ he, Mum?" Tanya could see that under the thin façade of Darcy's aggression, her terror was building; tightening the corners of her mouth and widening her eyes, as if to better see the answer coming. Raising her shoulders and crossing her arms defensively, as if to better protect herself.

"You've just missed him. By about an hour."

It was frightening that, for a moment, her expression was very little changed. Her jaw was just as set, before it started to wobble, her brow just as determined, before it crushed her eyes closed, and her back just as stiff, before it shuddered and she seemed to _curve _in on herself, like a metal strut suddenly carrying too much weight. She was completely silent for a few seconds, leaning heavily against a wall under the shaking of her legs, before a tiny cry was wrenched from her throat; a very quiet keen that echoed her bewilderment, despair and betrayal.

Tanya couldn't help but feel a small stab of hurt that Darcy sought the cold support of the building itself rather than that of her mother.

"No," the younger woman whispered. "_No."_

There was the rejection. Tanya spoke quickly, trying to sweep away any emotions that were threatening on the horizon.

"Where's Arthur? I thought he would have wanted to come-"

"It… _can't…_ be true," the younger woman whispered, her only indication that she had heard her mother a slight flinch. "He was supposed to survive; he's _always_ survived. I can't- I- I don't-"

She looked up to her mother, their eyes as wide and black as each other, and Tanya saw something deeper and darker in there than had been there previously; she saw the disorientation and the shock and the inability to grasp that she was _never _going to see her father _again_ morph into something of a realisation. A realisation that dawned terror and misery. A realisation that she was _never. _Going to see her father. _Again._

"He killed himself? Why? _Why_ did he do that? What was so impossible that he had to- What did _you-"_

Darcy's voice broke, but Tanya didn't let herself hear. The effect of that recognition of impending loneliness was plain to see; it took a slightly tousled young woman with eyes that glittered, and gave her back as she crumbled, weeping openly.

"Too- late… I wasn't quick enough- I swear, when you- you phoned, I got the first flight- the _first flight_ out of Sicily-"

Tanya watched her slide to the floor from her chair at the empty bedside, watched her sob between phrases, and then try desperately to regain composure enough to speak again, only to be interrupted by a rasp of her lungs that couldn't bring in enough air as all of her oxygen was turned to horror.

"I swear- the flight- it was three hours- _three_- and then it only took me so far as H-Heathrow- and- and- I had to drive-"

Tanya said nothing, but knew that this was what succumbing looked like.

"… there's a rental car outside- I had- I had to drive all the way-"

Tanya knew what she had to do.

"I swear- I tried to get here-"

She was supposed to walk the two steps over to her little girl and sit down beside her, hold her tight in her arms-

"Mum, I _swear to you_, I swear that I- I- I thought I was going to get here-"

-and then she would whisper to her that it wasn't her fault that her daddy was gone, and that she knew that he knew that she loved him-

"-didn't even- didn't even say- g-g-goodbye-"

-and that love was going to become easier, she'd see, one day, that there would be a time that love wouldn't betray her-

"Did he- did he know? That- that I was trying?"

-or break her heart, but that it would make her stronger, and it would set her free-

"Mum- _Mum, I'm so sorry- I tried, I swear I tried so hard-"_

Darcy looked up at her, finally, broken and rough and flayed raw; seeking solace in the one place she had left. Searching for an answer, someone to tell her why her father couldn't bear to live any longer, not even for her.

Tanya said nothing. She felt the seconds tick away as she refused to meet her daughter's eyes, and her opportunity to get this one thing right, slowly close. She couldn't do it. She couldn't bring herself to rip herself open; to expose herself to the emotions in order to help herself heal. Not even for her little girl. She would never let go of her hold on herself, in the same way that she would not let herself wear black in mourning; she deserved no such indulgence. Her husband had killed himself. She'd made his life so insufferable that he couldn't bear to live any longer, not even for her. She would tend the garden that had choked him even as she hated it, and every summer when the flowers were at their most beautiful, she would remember that it was her own fault.

Darcy stared at her mother for a moment longer before looking down at her hands. They were wet, and clenched into fists so tight that she may have cut her palms a little on the nails that she had bitten ragged on the plane home. She nodded slowly to herself, a few more tears spilling down her cheeks before she scrubbed them away, brutally. She sniffed a little, quietly, as her fingers slowed and became delicate as she wiped the tears around her eyes away, trying to retain whatever small dignity she had left by restoring what little of her eye-makeup remained.

Standing slowly, she straightened her skirt and shirt with hands that shook only a very little, before clearing her throat. The last thing she straightened was her spine.

She didn't seek eye contact as she spoke.

"Will I be able to see him?"

Tanya didn't hesitate, looking over to her now that she had once again become the only version of Darcy that she knew how to react to. She recognised that this was enduring.

"No, the hospital staff have taken him to the morgue, and they're not allowed visitors down there." She had no idea if it was true. "Besides, there will be a funeral soon."

Darcy nodded slowly, eyes on the slightly scuffed toes of her shoes- she had caught them on the floor. They would have to be polished.

"You know I can't stay with you, don't you?"

Tanya nodded, and she could have sworn that she saw Miss James take her battered phone from her pocket and send a short text as she left the room.


End file.
